Edgar here, from the old neighborhood in North Park. I can't stop eyeballing the TV right now, searching for some kind of answer, my body feeling about dead on the couch. We've had another plane crash in San Diego, and it's all over the news. Hard to stomach after the one crashing in our neighborhood back in '78. I don't want it in my head anymore, but I can't seem to stop watching either.

 

I got your new address a few years back from Mrs. Jawarski down at Jubilee Seniors, where she's staying now. I've been meaning to write, but can't seem to sit down and do it. Guess it's always the ladies who keep track of these things. You probably heard Betty passed on, and I'm alone now.

 

I really need to talk to you, buddy. Nobody else has any idea what we went through in the 70's. Now they've got two homes burning up on camera as I write this. North of here. Military jet. The houses are all but gone as I watch. I can't seem to get up or out of my slippers since I saw the black smoke out the window and turned on the tube. Couldn't go to work today. They keep playing the same segments again and again, plain as day. It's all too much.

 

I got myself a part-time job at the gas station by Dwight and 32^nd. A couple of times a week I go in and sell gas and a few candy bars while the guys take lunch.

The families up in University City are crying and trying to get past the police tape to see if their loved ones are alive. It's all happening right in front of me as I stare at the set in the same old two-bedroom bungalow I always lived in. A baby and two ladies killed right in their home. You'd think I'd have all this stuff figured out by now, why some people get picked and not others. How it can happen so randomly and suddenly. People are running to get away from the burning gas and fumes, getting into vans and rushing for the freeway.

 

You remember the refrigerated vans all over the neighborhood, don't you? The SWAT team picking up body parts, throwing them inside? Endless sirens. You remember what it's like not knowing when it's safe to go back. I'm not sure it's ever safe, Sam. No matter where you go. Not when things like this can happen.

 

University City was just growing out of nowhere around the time you left and all those people started emptying out of the Midwest and coming this way and needed a place to stay. Course they had no idea this would happen.

 

Korean fellow, husband and father of the ones that were killed, comes out on the news a little bit ago and says we got to pray for the pilot who parachuted so he doesn't suffer. Says it wasn't the pilot's fault. Damnedest thing. 

 

You spend your life hoping the dangerous parts are over, but never quite believe it. When Betty gave me the slippers just before she went on, they made me feel safer. They still do, no matter how old. I wouldn't tell most people that. Or the part about never getting out of my sweat pants today, into some respectable trousers and a work shirt. First, all the clean ones are in a heap in the bedroom. The kids say I should get someone to help, but what do they know, living all over the country like they do? I haven't seen the bottom of that pile too many times since Betty passed.

 

Scary, ain't it? Remembering the day the Boeing hit? Everywhere you looked legs were hanging off fences and phone wires and acacia trees. The Shermans' old cocker spaniel died on the front yard, and that was it. Betty couldn't stop crying. I don't blame you a bit for moving on after what it did to your house, Sam. Not after the place boomed and lit up like World War II. The older folks are mostly gone now—either to homes, like Milly Jawarski, or in with their kids. I always figured I may as well stay here and dare the gods. If you can get singled out once by a 747, you can get singled out again no matter where you are. But the neighborhood doesn't feel safe, no. Sometimes I think I can still smell flesh burning.

 

The younger folks have moved in and taken over. Bright colored houses instead of all the little white bungalows like it used to be. They grow plants that don't need water now since they say we're living in a desert here and shouldn't waste the resources. You ask me, it's not a waste to have a little greenery around. I miss the old Italian Cypresses and weeping willows.

 

These kids take out the aerial photos that got took all those years ago, right after the crash, and think they can imagine, but they can't. What do they know about 177 people gone in a second? What do they know about friends and neighbors sitting on their porches or lying on their couches and getting torn to pieces? No place is safe. You can die any minute. Some of us are just plain cursed.

 

Albert's still down at the corner. I see an old Mexican gal pushing his wheelchair through the neighborhood, and I try to get out and wave, but I'm not sure he knows it's me. I'd go on over and tell him about this current situation if I could just get myself out of the house.

 

But I don't blame you, Sam. Really I don't. I might leave here too if I had anywhere to go.

 

Just thought you might want to know.

 

Regards,

 

Edgar

 

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